Miami (AFP)

A fire at an electrical station on the American island of Puerto Rico plunged thousands of residents into darkness Thursday evening, shortly after the electricity supplier announced it had suffered a cyberattack, without making any connection to the disaster.

"There was a fire in a transformer at the Monacillo substation," a district of the capital San Juan, said supplier Luma Energy.

Two hours earlier, the company explained that it was the target of a denial of service attack that made it "difficult" for customers to access their online accounts.

This cyberattack, a denial of service attack designed to shut down a website by overloading it with traffic, accounted for up to "two million visits per second," says Luma.

It comes weeks after Colonial Pipeline, the operator of a massive US pipeline, and global meat giant JBS, both fell victim to ransomware, or "ransomware," cyberattacks, the authors of which exploit loopholes. security to block computer systems and then demand a ransom to unblock them.

The Colonial pipeline, the main source of gasoline for most of the eastern United States, had been temporarily shut down, causing stockouts in several major cities.

Luma had not established Thursday evening a link between the cyberattack and the fire, nor given estimates of the number of homes affected by the cuts.

The fire prompted "protection systems to interrupt" the current "to prevent further damage," Luma explains on his Facebook account.

"The fire caused major power cuts throughout the island," said the company, which claims "to work to restore service".

Puerto Rico's representative to the US Congress, Jenniffer González, said on Twitter that the power cuts affected more than 500,000 individuals.

The governor of the island, Pedro Pierluisi, who mentions an "explosion", said "to take all the necessary actions to protect essential services, such as the electrical service".

The authorities "are investigating the explosion" and those responsible "will have to answer to the people of Puerto Rico", he hammered on Twitter.

Luma Energy, a company created to manage Puerto Rico's electricity grid, has only been operating since June 1.

On social media, images showed large plumes of black smoke above the power station, along with impressive flames and sparks.

"The restoration (of power) will begin in two hours and will continue overnight," the provider wrote on Facebook at 7:40 pm local time (11:40 pm GMT).

© 2021 AFP